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On September 29 2026 08:13 KwarK wrote:
For the killing of journalists I feel like the bar should be proving that all of them are really enemy combatants.
What if publishing the evidence would compromise intelligence sources or methods? Or endangers mules?
"Israel must publicly prove that every journalist was an enemy combatant” isn't a workable evidentiary standard. Some intelligence may be genuine but impossible to disclose without compromising sources, surveillance capabilities, or ongoing operations.
There is also a distinction between someone being a journalist, someone being affiliated with an armed group, and someone actually losing civilian protection under IHL through direct participation in hostilities. Those aren't necessarily the same thing. Perhaps only one of several targets was a threat, but a high priority one, thus the others were deemed necessary sacrifice.
The CPJ just completed a major review after discovering that some people previously classified as journalists were actually Hamas / PIJ combatants. It removed several people and says its remaining list excludes people it found to have been engaging in combat.
The numbers of killed journalists matches the overall death count in Gaza in terms of deaths over time... high spikes in the first two years, now getting ever lower. There are still roughly 1k journalists working in Gaza. If the IDF's goal was to somehow scare them away without actually saying "we kill journalists, because they are journalists" I don't think it works really well, while most certainly having the effect of alienating allies and the Western world in general.
On September 30 2026 01:30 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:On September 28 2026 23:55 LightSpectra wrote:
You are extremely close to getting the point. Let's imagine for a moment a world where Israel kills journalists indiscriminately and claims all of them are Hamas-affiliated post-facto to avoid accountability. How would that world look different from the world we're currently in? So you are asserting that this is what is happening. What evidence do you have for that, beyond the hypothetical itself and "I don't like Israel and to me that is the only possible option."? Because there is an important distinction between “Israel killed a journalist and later claimed he was Hamas-affiliated” and “Israel indiscriminately kills journalists and simply invents Hamas affiliations afterward.” Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. @Jankisa: I asked you specific follow up questions. Are you able to look five posts above or is that too much to ask for? How about we discuss one of our follow ups one at a time? Perhaps that makes it easier for you. Let's start with this: "So what exactly do you want to discuss about these 2 cases that makes you think undermine the general points and concessions that have already been made? If it's evidence of unlawful conduct or failures of accountability, that's a substantially narrower claim than evidence of a deliberate policy of targeting journalists, let alone genocidal intent." I'm absolutely not going to read your bs excuses for not engaging with these obvious examples of IDF blowing up, intentionally, groups of journalists or with your weak attempts to make it about semantics of genocide. You can either say yes, these cases are problematic, or you can provide evidence and explanations which I'm not aware of that might shed a different light on them, but you are, again, completely refusing to engage with this in a way that is useful. The thesis is that Israel intentionally targets journalists to scare them out of reporting, which is a war crime, they are also refusing to investigate and impose punishment on the units responsible for them, which encourages other units and commanders to continue doing this. All of that constitutes encouragement from IDF and Israeli regime for committing war crimes and killing journalists, which is consistent with someone who wants to continue engaging in genocidal actions.
Which excuses? What exactly do you want me to do if not engaging by writing several paragraphs?
I am truly not sure what it is you are pushing for.
My proposal was the following: I'll answer your questions about one topic, then you'll answer mine. So far, I don't understand what you are trying to prove / show with your post that you re-quoted. Hence I asked what exactly it is that you want to discuss about them. To that question, you did not reply.
So I ask a third time: What exactly do you want to discuss about the links / events you posted? I seriously don't understand how they undermine the broader points I made.
If you want me to blindly say "Yes, it bothers me when innocent people, including journalists, get killed in a war", I can happily do that.
If you actually want to discuss (without chickening out again like with the Srebrenica / dolus specialis example), I am happy to go on. But for the continuation, I will first need to know what you actually want to discuss about the links you posted.
On September 29 2026 22:21 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:
Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. If you kill someone in self-defense, you can't then go on a wanton killing spree and say "well the first guy was in self-defense so we can be fairly certain the rest are justifiable too." Show nested quote +And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. The obvious benefit is there's less live coverage of their war crimes and therefore more plausible deniability. I don't know why that would be so hard to fathom unless you're beginning with the presumption that there is no war crimes and therefore nothing to cover up.
I am not arguing for that. But you - and others - are making claims that journalists are being targeted for being journalists. I've yet seen evidence for that claim.
And I seriously don't understand how you picture Gaza. Do you seriously believe that the IDF thinks that it is a good tactic to deliberately target journalists through several command chains which could leak out on any level? Which alienates their allies and the West in general even if the leaks do not get out, while there are still enough willing journalists and Gazan population with cellphones out there to document the war? All for the questionable attempt to hide something which they actually plan to commit - again on several command levels - all with intent? Do you know how utterly absurd that sounds?
What about the evidence from the IDF that showed "journalists" to be Hamas? What about the evidence from neutral sources like Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)? And isn't it only logical that more journalists die if you have an exceptionally high rate of them being in a war zone? While facing a much larger risk than the usual population? Do none of these arguments or none of this evidence make sense to you?
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I don't know how much they're deliberately targeting journalists, just blowing up or shooting into civilian areas (where the journalists happen to be) and killing a lot of them recklessly. You'd think that would just be an ordinary happening in war, but two-thirds of all journalists killed in war zones in 2025 were killed in the Gaza War despite the total number of fatalities in the war being about a tenth of all conflicts across the Earth (i.e. including Ukraine, African islamist insurgencies, Rohingya, etc.).
If you want to talk about the Committee to Protect Journalists, here's what they have to say: "Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all press killings in both 2025 and 2024. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since CPJ began documentation in 1992." https://cpj.org/special-reports/record-129-press-members-killed-in-2025-israel-responsible-for-2-of-3-of-deaths/
Russia has also been bombing civilian targets in Ukraine but the IDF has killed 20x as many journalists as Russia (same source above) and the total number of casualties in the Ukraine War is something like 4x as the Gaza War. That's why Israel has been saying "they're all Hamas" even though it strains credibility. Fatima Hassouna whose work is very public and demonstrably not Hamas, plus ten members of her family including her pregnant sister, killed by an Israeli missile? It's not meant to be a good lie, just a good enough lie for their defenders to pretend to be persuaded.
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On September 30 2026 23:48 LightSpectra wrote:I don't know how much they're deliberately targeting journalists, just blowing up or shooting into civilian areas (where the journalists happen to be) and killing a lot of them recklessly. You'd think that would just be an ordinary happening in war, but two-thirds of all journalists killed in war zones in 2025 were killed in the Gaza War despite the total number of fatalities in the war being about a tenth of all conflicts across the Earth (i.e. including Ukraine, African islamist insurgencies, Rohingya, etc.). If you want to talk about the Committee to Protect Journalists, here's what they have to say: "Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all press killings in both 2025 and 2024. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since CPJ began documentation in 1992." https://cpj.org/special-reports/record-129-press-members-killed-in-2025-israel-responsible-for-2-of-3-of-deaths/Russia has also been bombing civilian targets in Ukraine but the IDF has killed 20x as many journalists as Russia (same source above) and the total number of casualties in the Ukraine War is something like 4x as the Gaza War. That's why Israel has been saying "they're all Hamas" even though it strains credibility. Fatima Hassouna whose work is very public and demonstrably not Hamas, plus ten members of her family including her pregnant sister, killed by an Israeli missile? It's not meant to be a good lie, just a good enough lie for their defenders to pretend to be persuaded.
Tbf, comparing total casualties to other warzones doesn't tell you whether the number of journalists killed was a statistical anomaly or not. Confounders:
1. Gaza is a high profile war with lots of eyes on it, so the ratio of journalists to other civilians is probably quite high compared to Myanmar or Sudan.
2. Gaza is extremely dense, so a bomb missing an enemy hideout is likely to hit a civilian building, possibly with journalists inside, whereas a bomb missing a hideout in Sudan or Ukraine is comparatively much more likely to just blow up a tree or some farmland.
3. Hamas is fighting a guerrilla war, hiding among the civilian population. If you try to hit them with a bomb you're likely to also blow up civilians. As opposed to somewhere like Ukraine where the Ukrainian army is doing its best to avoid civilian areas and ensure any drones targeting the army don't accidentally also murder civilians.
Both (2) and (3) are obviously great reasons to NOT THROW BOMBS at all, but Israel is blatantly ignoring that and takes the multiple war crimes they're committing with that in stride. But I don't think you can say that in addition to a total disregard of civilian life they are intentionally targeting journalists.
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The CPJ link directly states "The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since CPJ began documentation in 1992."
I get the point that Gaza is more dense and Hamas uses human shields, I really do, but random Islamist suicide bombings in civilian areas killing more civilians but less journalists than the IDF by orders of magnitude really begs close examination of the facts.
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On September 30 2026 23:22 PremoBeats wrote:
The numbers of killed journalists matches the overall death count in Gaza in terms of deaths over time... high spikes in the first two years, now getting ever lower. There are still roughly 1k journalists working in Gaza. If the IDF's goal was to somehow scare them away without actually saying "we kill journalists, because they are journalists" I don't think it works really well, while most certainly having the effect of alienating allies and the Western world in general. I am not arguing for that. But you - and others - are making claims that journalists are being targeted for being journalists. I've yet seen evidence for that claim. The intentional targeting to hide their crimes is just saying that Israel had no idea about camera phones.
The real things worthy of investigation start with searching if there are trigger-happy units that shoot first at anything they deem suspicious, and have some expectation of facing no consequences if they get it wrong. Were they removed from the battlefield? Did the IDF change its approach/learn at all in response to how the killing happened? Related to this is whether IDF training reflects indifference to verifying threats and passing it up the chain when there's doubt. Investigations also should check for errors or indifference in assessing military advantage or expected civilian deaths, like if one low-ranking Hamas militant with a PRESS vest was justification for killing 3 civilians in the vehicle. There's a dividing line between mistakes made during war, and not taking reasonable steps to confirm identity in the first place.
What about the evidence from neutral sources like Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)? It's both not neutral and certainly doesn't have to be neutral. They're going to adopt an evidentiary standard of a bad killing of a journalist unless proven otherwise. They judge the proof themselves. It will help establish an upper bound for civilian deaths that were also journalist civilian deaths, and that's valuable to know.
If you look at the names the CPJ removed from journalists killed, it does not include Anas al-Sharif. The IDF claims to have him identified as a Hamas operative in unit rosters, training lists, and salary records. Even in the phone book. These could all be real seized documents in the battlefield that are absolutely reason to kill an enemy combatant. They could also be made-up lists trying to cover up examples of missing a target or striking a target merely suspected of being a terrorist target. (That would be a huge public scandal in an intelligence unit, and reason enough to cover it up.) The CPJ is going to say that he's a journalist and not a terrorist until they actually see the documents themselves and interview the soldiers that discovered them. They say the IDF doesn't have the documents and they're all journalists until the evidence is released. So there's bias, and it's natural, and people should incorporate that into their viewpoint.
The IDF likely won't release the whole sensitive lists of people they're targeting for being in Hamas until the war is over.
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On September 30 2026 23:48 LightSpectra wrote:I don't know how much they're deliberately targeting journalists, just blowing up or shooting into civilian areas (where the journalists happen to be) and killing a lot of them recklessly. You'd think that would just be an ordinary happening in war, but two-thirds of all journalists killed in war zones in 2025 were killed in the Gaza War despite the total number of fatalities in the war being about a tenth of all conflicts across the Earth (i.e. including Ukraine, African islamist insurgencies, Rohingya, etc.). If you want to talk about the Committee to Protect Journalists, here's what they have to say: "Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all press killings in both 2025 and 2024. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since CPJ began documentation in 1992." https://cpj.org/special-reports/record-129-press-members-killed-in-2025-israel-responsible-for-2-of-3-of-deaths/Russia has also been bombing civilian targets in Ukraine but the IDF has killed 20x as many journalists as Russia (same source above) and the total number of casualties in the Ukraine War is something like 4x as the Gaza War. That's why Israel has been saying "they're all Hamas" even though it strains credibility. Fatima Hassouna whose work is very public and demonstrably not Hamas, plus ten members of her family including her pregnant sister, killed by an Israeli missile? It's not meant to be a good lie, just a good enough lie for their defenders to pretend to be persuaded.
So what is the active war zone in Gaza? Open terrain / rural or urban? What about the next 9 biggest war zones?
How big is the fighting area? How many journalists are present? How many journalists per square meter?
Do other factions also hide among civilians and don't distinguish between combatants and civilians? Do they hide among the press?
Do you realize that Gaza with its 300 km² war zone has more journalists than the Russo-Ukrainian conflict with its 600.000 km² spread and 24k - 48k km² active war zone?
If you want to make relative comparisons, you shouldn't only look at one number and leave out context that heavily influences the data.
On October 01 2026 01:39 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2026 23:22 PremoBeats wrote:
The numbers of killed journalists matches the overall death count in Gaza in terms of deaths over time... high spikes in the first two years, now getting ever lower. There are still roughly 1k journalists working in Gaza. If the IDF's goal was to somehow scare them away without actually saying "we kill journalists, because they are journalists" I don't think it works really well, while most certainly having the effect of alienating allies and the Western world in general. Show nested quote +I am not arguing for that. But you - and others - are making claims that journalists are being targeted for being journalists. I've yet seen evidence for that claim. The intentional targeting to hide their crimes is just saying that Israel had no idea about camera phones. The real things worthy of investigation start with searching if there are trigger-happy units that shoot first at anything they deem suspicious, and have some expectation of facing no consequences if they get it wrong. Were they removed from the battlefield? Did the IDF change its approach/learn at all in response to how the killing happened? Related to this is whether IDF training reflects indifference to verifying threats and passing it up the chain when there's doubt. Investigations also should check for errors or indifference in assessing military advantage or expected civilian deaths, like if one low-ranking Hamas militant with a PRESS vest was justification for killing 3 civilians in the vehicle. There's a dividing line between mistakes made during war, and not taking reasonable steps to confirm identity in the first place. Show nested quote +What about the evidence from neutral sources like Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)? It's both not neutral and certainly doesn't have to be neutral. They're going to adopt an evidentiary standard of a bad killing of a journalist unless proven otherwise. They judge the proof themselves. It will help establish an upper bound for civilian deaths that were also journalist civilian deaths, and that's valuable to know. If you look at the names the CPJ removed from journalists killed, it does not include Anas al-Sharif. The IDF claims to have him identified as a Hamas operative in unit rosters, training lists, and salary records. Even in the phone book. These could all be real seized documents in the battlefield that are absolutely reason to kill an enemy combatant. They could also be made-up lists trying to cover up examples of missing a target or striking a target merely suspected of being a terrorist target. (That would be a huge public scandal in an intelligence unit, and reason enough to cover it up.) The CPJ is going to say that he's a journalist and not a terrorist until they actually see the documents themselves and interview the soldiers that discovered them. They say the IDF doesn't have the documents and they're all journalists until the evidence is released. So there's bias, and it's natural, and people should incorporate that into their viewpoint. The IDF likely won't release the whole sensitive lists of people they're targeting for being in Hamas until the war is over.
I can get behind that... interesting points raised. Yeah, calling the CPJ neutral wasn't well formulated.
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United States44327 Posts
On September 30 2026 23:22 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2026 08:13 KwarK wrote:
For the killing of journalists I feel like the bar should be proving that all of them are really enemy combatants. What if publishing the evidence would compromise intelligence sources or methods? Or endangers mules? "Israel must publicly prove that every journalist was an enemy combatant” isn't a workable evidentiary standard. Some intelligence may be genuine but impossible to disclose without compromising sources, surveillance capabilities, or ongoing operations. There is also a distinction between someone being a journalist, someone being affiliated with an armed group, and someone actually losing civilian protection under IHL through direct participation in hostilities. Those aren't necessarily the same thing. Perhaps only one of several targets was a threat, but a high priority one, thus the others were deemed necessary sacrifice. The CPJ just completed a major review after discovering that some people previously classified as journalists were actually Hamas / PIJ combatants. It removed several people and says its remaining list excludes people it found to have been engaging in combat. The numbers of killed journalists matches the overall death count in Gaza in terms of deaths over time... high spikes in the first two years, now getting ever lower. There are still roughly 1k journalists working in Gaza. If the IDF's goal was to somehow scare them away without actually saying "we kill journalists, because they are journalists" I don't think it works really well, while most certainly having the effect of alienating allies and the Western world in general. Show nested quote +On September 30 2026 01:30 Jankisa wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:On September 28 2026 23:55 LightSpectra wrote:
You are extremely close to getting the point. Let's imagine for a moment a world where Israel kills journalists indiscriminately and claims all of them are Hamas-affiliated post-facto to avoid accountability. How would that world look different from the world we're currently in? So you are asserting that this is what is happening. What evidence do you have for that, beyond the hypothetical itself and "I don't like Israel and to me that is the only possible option."? Because there is an important distinction between “Israel killed a journalist and later claimed he was Hamas-affiliated” and “Israel indiscriminately kills journalists and simply invents Hamas affiliations afterward.” Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. @Jankisa: I asked you specific follow up questions. Are you able to look five posts above or is that too much to ask for? How about we discuss one of our follow ups one at a time? Perhaps that makes it easier for you. Let's start with this: "So what exactly do you want to discuss about these 2 cases that makes you think undermine the general points and concessions that have already been made? If it's evidence of unlawful conduct or failures of accountability, that's a substantially narrower claim than evidence of a deliberate policy of targeting journalists, let alone genocidal intent." I'm absolutely not going to read your bs excuses for not engaging with these obvious examples of IDF blowing up, intentionally, groups of journalists or with your weak attempts to make it about semantics of genocide. You can either say yes, these cases are problematic, or you can provide evidence and explanations which I'm not aware of that might shed a different light on them, but you are, again, completely refusing to engage with this in a way that is useful. The thesis is that Israel intentionally targets journalists to scare them out of reporting, which is a war crime, they are also refusing to investigate and impose punishment on the units responsible for them, which encourages other units and commanders to continue doing this. All of that constitutes encouragement from IDF and Israeli regime for committing war crimes and killing journalists, which is consistent with someone who wants to continue engaging in genocidal actions. Which excuses? What exactly do you want me to do if not engaging by writing several paragraphs? I am truly not sure what it is you are pushing for. My proposal was the following: I'll answer your questions about one topic, then you'll answer mine. So far, I don't understand what you are trying to prove / show with your post that you re-quoted. Hence I asked what exactly it is that you want to discuss about them. To that question, you did not reply. So I ask a third time: What exactly do you want to discuss about the links / events you posted? I seriously don't understand how they undermine the broader points I made. If you want me to blindly say "Yes, it bothers me when innocent people, including journalists, get killed in a war", I can happily do that. If you actually want to discuss (without chickening out again like with the Srebrenica / dolus specialis example), I am happy to go on. But for the continuation, I will first need to know what you actually want to discuss about the links you posted. Show nested quote +On September 29 2026 22:21 LightSpectra wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:
Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. If you kill someone in self-defense, you can't then go on a wanton killing spree and say "well the first guy was in self-defense so we can be fairly certain the rest are justifiable too." And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. The obvious benefit is there's less live coverage of their war crimes and therefore more plausible deniability. I don't know why that would be so hard to fathom unless you're beginning with the presumption that there is no war crimes and therefore nothing to cover up. I am not arguing for that. But you - and others - are making claims that journalists are being targeted for being journalists. I've yet seen evidence for that claim. And I seriously don't understand how you picture Gaza. Do you seriously believe that the IDF thinks that it is a good tactic to deliberately target journalists through several command chains which could leak out on any level? Which alienates their allies and the West in general even if the leaks do not get out, while there are still enough willing journalists and Gazan population with cellphones out there to document the war? All for the questionable attempt to hide something which they actually plan to commit - again on several command levels - all with intent? Do you know how utterly absurd that sounds? What about the evidence from the IDF that showed "journalists" to be Hamas? What about the evidence from neutral sources like Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)? And isn't it only logical that more journalists die if you have an exceptionally high rate of them being in a war zone? While facing a much larger risk than the usual population? Do none of these arguments or none of this evidence make sense to you?
Journalists go to jail to protect their sources. Why shouldn't the people who kill the journalists?
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Why shouldn't people that kill children?
I mean, what is your point? Does it address any of the context? Have I ever made any excuses for Israeli war crimes?
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On October 01 2026 04:50 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2026 23:22 PremoBeats wrote:On September 29 2026 08:13 KwarK wrote:
For the killing of journalists I feel like the bar should be proving that all of them are really enemy combatants. What if publishing the evidence would compromise intelligence sources or methods? Or endangers mules? "Israel must publicly prove that every journalist was an enemy combatant” isn't a workable evidentiary standard. Some intelligence may be genuine but impossible to disclose without compromising sources, surveillance capabilities, or ongoing operations. There is also a distinction between someone being a journalist, someone being affiliated with an armed group, and someone actually losing civilian protection under IHL through direct participation in hostilities. Those aren't necessarily the same thing. Perhaps only one of several targets was a threat, but a high priority one, thus the others were deemed necessary sacrifice. The CPJ just completed a major review after discovering that some people previously classified as journalists were actually Hamas / PIJ combatants. It removed several people and says its remaining list excludes people it found to have been engaging in combat. The numbers of killed journalists matches the overall death count in Gaza in terms of deaths over time... high spikes in the first two years, now getting ever lower. There are still roughly 1k journalists working in Gaza. If the IDF's goal was to somehow scare them away without actually saying "we kill journalists, because they are journalists" I don't think it works really well, while most certainly having the effect of alienating allies and the Western world in general. On September 30 2026 01:30 Jankisa wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:On September 28 2026 23:55 LightSpectra wrote:
You are extremely close to getting the point. Let's imagine for a moment a world where Israel kills journalists indiscriminately and claims all of them are Hamas-affiliated post-facto to avoid accountability. How would that world look different from the world we're currently in? So you are asserting that this is what is happening. What evidence do you have for that, beyond the hypothetical itself and "I don't like Israel and to me that is the only possible option."? Because there is an important distinction between “Israel killed a journalist and later claimed he was Hamas-affiliated” and “Israel indiscriminately kills journalists and simply invents Hamas affiliations afterward.” Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. @Jankisa: I asked you specific follow up questions. Are you able to look five posts above or is that too much to ask for? How about we discuss one of our follow ups one at a time? Perhaps that makes it easier for you. Let's start with this: "So what exactly do you want to discuss about these 2 cases that makes you think undermine the general points and concessions that have already been made? If it's evidence of unlawful conduct or failures of accountability, that's a substantially narrower claim than evidence of a deliberate policy of targeting journalists, let alone genocidal intent." I'm absolutely not going to read your bs excuses for not engaging with these obvious examples of IDF blowing up, intentionally, groups of journalists or with your weak attempts to make it about semantics of genocide. You can either say yes, these cases are problematic, or you can provide evidence and explanations which I'm not aware of that might shed a different light on them, but you are, again, completely refusing to engage with this in a way that is useful. The thesis is that Israel intentionally targets journalists to scare them out of reporting, which is a war crime, they are also refusing to investigate and impose punishment on the units responsible for them, which encourages other units and commanders to continue doing this. All of that constitutes encouragement from IDF and Israeli regime for committing war crimes and killing journalists, which is consistent with someone who wants to continue engaging in genocidal actions. Which excuses? What exactly do you want me to do if not engaging by writing several paragraphs? I am truly not sure what it is you are pushing for. My proposal was the following: I'll answer your questions about one topic, then you'll answer mine. So far, I don't understand what you are trying to prove / show with your post that you re-quoted. Hence I asked what exactly it is that you want to discuss about them. To that question, you did not reply. So I ask a third time: What exactly do you want to discuss about the links / events you posted? I seriously don't understand how they undermine the broader points I made. If you want me to blindly say "Yes, it bothers me when innocent people, including journalists, get killed in a war", I can happily do that. If you actually want to discuss (without chickening out again like with the Srebrenica / dolus specialis example), I am happy to go on. But for the continuation, I will first need to know what you actually want to discuss about the links you posted. On September 29 2026 22:21 LightSpectra wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:
Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. If you kill someone in self-defense, you can't then go on a wanton killing spree and say "well the first guy was in self-defense so we can be fairly certain the rest are justifiable too." And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. The obvious benefit is there's less live coverage of their war crimes and therefore more plausible deniability. I don't know why that would be so hard to fathom unless you're beginning with the presumption that there is no war crimes and therefore nothing to cover up. I am not arguing for that. But you - and others - are making claims that journalists are being targeted for being journalists. I've yet seen evidence for that claim. And I seriously don't understand how you picture Gaza. Do you seriously believe that the IDF thinks that it is a good tactic to deliberately target journalists through several command chains which could leak out on any level? Which alienates their allies and the West in general even if the leaks do not get out, while there are still enough willing journalists and Gazan population with cellphones out there to document the war? All for the questionable attempt to hide something which they actually plan to commit - again on several command levels - all with intent? Do you know how utterly absurd that sounds? What about the evidence from the IDF that showed "journalists" to be Hamas? What about the evidence from neutral sources like Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)? And isn't it only logical that more journalists die if you have an exceptionally high rate of them being in a war zone? While facing a much larger risk than the usual population? Do none of these arguments or none of this evidence make sense to you? Journalists go to jail to protect their sources. Why shouldn't the people who kill the journalists?
Because in war intention matters. There’s a clear criminal and moral distinction between a journalist being killed as collateral damage in a legitimate military strike vs being deliberately targeted.
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Northern Ireland27419 Posts
The IDF sure kills a lot of civilians and journalists for an organisation not trying to
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@LightSpectre... just did some very rough number crunching in regards to geographic concentration of journalists relative to the active war zone:
Using 2026 estimates, Gaza stands out by far: its entire 300 km² territory and roughly 1,200 journalists correspond to only about 0,3 million m² per journalist. By comparison, Sudan's active conflict areas are roughly 0,7 - 2 million m² per journalist, while Ukraine's much larger active combat belt - 24,000 - 48,000 km² - may have on the order of 120 - 480 million m² per frontline journalist, depending on the assumed number of reporters present. The figures for other conflicts are generally even higher. These are estimates rather than directly measured statistics, but they illustrate my point: Gaza has an exceptionally high concentration of journalists relative to the physical size of its war zone, whereas most other major conflicts are geographically much more dispersed and have far fewer journalists physically near the fighting.
Gaza is potentially hundreds of times more journalist-dense than many of the world's large rural wars.
And in that equation there is no hiding among civilians and hiding among the press co-factor, which makes Gaza even more an odd-man-out.
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EPT
